Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers

Unofficial anagram of the Manual of Style

RfC about the symbol for Astronomical Unit

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of the discussion was to go with Option 3 (au, while not prohibiting AU). Options 1, 2, and the status quo were firmly rejected, leaving only a discussion about whether to make this a "hard" or "soft" deprecation; in other words, allowing existing AU usage or actively discouraging its further use. There was strong support for both options, but more advocated for the position that there was no rush to immediately convert all instances of AU to au. From an administrative perspective, I note that the sentence An alternative is AU contradicts the overall idea and sentiment of deprecation, and it will be struck from the updated table. If there comes a point where au is officially recognized by all astronomical societies and its use has been deprecated on the English Wikipedia, there is no prejudice against starting a new discussion to remove the "Comment" regarding AU, though a formal RFC might not be necessary. Primefac (talk) 22:03, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

---

This RfC relates to the options discussed in the immediately preceding section, which has become inactive in the last week. To bring this discussion to a close, I am initiating a formal RfC, which may attract additional participants and has a formal closing mechanism. Below are sections for expressing support of the four draft revisions proposed above. SteveMcCluskey (talk) 02:02, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

The options

Guidelines on specific units

Option	Group	Name	Symbol	Comment
Status quo	Length, Speed	astronomical unit	AU (not A.U., au, ua)	AU is the most commonly used symbol for this unit, both in popular and professional articles, and is hence also used on Wikipedia (though some organizations, including the BIPM and IAU, recommend au).
One	Length, Speed	astronomical unit	au, AU (not A.U., ua)	au is recomended by the BIPM and the IAU, and is called for in the publications of the AAS (AJ and ApJ) and the RAS (MNRAS). AU is a commonly used symbol for this unit, both in popular and professional articles.
Two	Length, Speed	astronomical unit	au, AU (not A.U., ua)	The preferred option au is recomended by the BIPM and the IAU, and is called for in the publications of the AAS (AJ and ApJ) and the RAS (MNRAS). AU remains an acceptable option as it is a commonly used symbol in both popular and professional articles.
Three	Length, Speed	astronomical unit	au (not A.U., ua)	The preferred option is au. An alternative is AU. Articles that already use AU may choose to switch to au or continue to use AU.
Four	Length, Speed	astronomical unit	au (not a.u., AU, ua)
Unicode	length, speed	astronomical unit	㍳ / ㍳	㍳ / ㍳

References

Support Status Quo (no change)

• AU is the best option of all, and we don't need the massive disruption changing to, or allowing, au. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:34, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
• I'm agnostic to both AU/au, but we should only have one. Allowing multiple acceptable variants does more harm than good (the light-year discussion comes to mind, but forget I mentioned that...).   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  12:59, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
• 'AU' is the traditional version; 'au' is the IAU preference. To me the 'AU' seems much clearer as 'au' looks too much like a misspelled word. The standard convention in English for an abbreviation is to capitalize the letters, which leans more toward 'AU'. But I can live with either, as long as the usage is consistent within an article. Praemonitus (talk) 14:26, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
• Strongly oppose the status quo. AU may be acceptable, but the status quo's deprecation of au, which is the internationally approved symbol for astronomical unit, is not. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 01:35, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
• Support. "AU" is far more commonly used, and is far more recognisable amongst readership, who are after all the folks we're trying to service. — Huntster (t @ c) 07:11, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
• Second choice, though we need not mention "this other organization prefers ...." stuff, other than maybe in a footnote with {{efn}}.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:19, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
• Weakly oppose: I consider this a poor third choice, and prefer au per international standards (BIPM, IAU). Dondervogel 2 (talk) 06:57, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Support Option One

• I actively oppose this ("au or AU, your choice") because it absolutely guarantees endless article-by-article editwarring and "my organization is better than yours" PoV pushing. Nothing constructive can come of this. The job of a style guide is to set a standard (even if an arbitrary one) to put a stop to both fights and "what do I do?" confusion, and [more importantly] to produce consistent output for readers – not to just throw up it's hands and say "whatever". If we were going to do that, the solution would be to remove any mention of the unit and its symbols at all. We also do not cite sources in MoS or other WP:P&G pages as if they're articles (unless is to point to resources like usability specs that an editor might need which is out-of-scope – not for justification, which is WP's own editorial consensus, arrived at by source comparison, consideration of project goals and reader needs, and many other factors.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:12, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
• strongly oppose, per SMcCandlish. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 07:02, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Support Option Two

• I actively oppose this (another "au or AU, your choice" option), for the same reason as stated for Option One.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:13, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
• Support this as my preferred option, but they're all better than the status quo. The correct form, used by all the relevant professional bodies and in particular the IAU, is au not AU. Modest Genius ^talk 14:33, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

To clarify: my order of preference would be 2, 3, 4, 1, status quo. Modest Genius ^talk 13:43, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

• strongly oppose, per SMcCandlish. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 07:05, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Support Option Three

• Support, as it favors the formally accepted abbreviation au, while not deprecating the widely used AU. SteveMcCluskey (talk) 02:02, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
• Support, not because AU is widely used in the big bad world out there but because until now it has been required by MOSNUM. This option permits a smooth transition to au. I can also live comfortably with Option #4 or the status quo. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 11:09, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

• Clarification: I now support options 3 and 4 equally. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 05:46, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

• Support. pace SMcClandlish, Option 4 could also lead to fresh conflict if a rush to change AU to au in existing articles triggers a return to the question here. If - or more likely, when - organisations such as NASA and more of the popular press move from AU to au over coming years, we can switch to Option 4. Order of preference: 3,4,2,1 while strongly opposing the status quo's choice of an obsolescent symbol. 92.19.25.65 (talk) 08:37, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
• Weak oppose, because it leans a bit in the direction of the two options immediately above, in being wishywashy and thus likely to perpetuate pointless disputes over style trivia on an article-by-article basis. This would be my distant third choice, if it came down to it, and only if we moved some of the organizational claptrap into an {{efn}} footnote.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:15, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
• Weak support. As I mentioned above, I favor leaving use of both symbols as acceptable, since the larger community is only slowly moving from the old form AU to the new au. Emerson said "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." For Wikipdedia to ban either of the accepted symbols in the name of consistency seems a perfect example of Emerson's "foolish consistency." Of options allowing both symbols Option 3 is more concise than option 2. I could be brought to a strong support if this option were internally consistent and provided both symbols in the Symbol column, as it already does in the Comment column. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 11:42, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

  You're severely misunderstanding Emerson, like almost everyone who quotes him out of context. See WP:EMERSON. He meant inflexibility of mindset in the face of changing facts – not typographic or stylistic consistency, something he was entirely used to as a professional writer.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:55, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Support Option Four

• Support, as it favors the formally accepted abbreviation au, and deprecating the not more so used AU. I have checked the published version of articles in MNRAS, A&A, AJ, ApJ, Icarus (I am an astronomer) and all the ones published in the last 1-2 years use au. Up to 2015 ApJ and AJ used AU, but it seems they stopped. Also I support it because I am an astronomer and I would like you to respect our decision and not to decide by yourself what is the astronomical standard! Why should Wikipedia users be above International Astronomical Union? SkZ (talk) 02:51, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
• Support as first choice (without prejudice toward settling on AU instead, if there's a reason WP should prefer it). KISS principle: Set a single WP recommendation, as MoS does on virtually everything (unless there's a WP:ENGVAR conflict). Otherwise people will fight it out article-by-article until the end of time. We could have a note in it about whose standard it is, in plain English, without a pile of inappropriate "back up my claims" citations, which don't belong in WP:P&G material, or it will inspire "sourcing wars". We already went through that at the main MoS page several years ago, resulting in the WP:MFD of two pages of cherry-picked citation material that people were using to editwar incessantly at MoS. Never again. The discussion above already demonstrates quite a lot of polarization (if that word can really apply to a mostly three-organization conflict), so this should be nipped in the bud right now.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:28, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
• I support options 3 and 4 equally. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 05:47, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Other

Unicode is coded for an AU symbol. If we change, we should use the Unicode coded version. Otherwise, we should remain at the status quo, per older discussions. -- 65.94.40.190 (talk) 06:46, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Option Unicode symbol

Unicode encodes a character for the Astronomical Unit, it is U+3373 (13171) ㍳ / ㍳ -- 65.94.40.190 (talk) 06:46, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Links to previous discussions

• from 2014 ...
• ... and from 2015.

Discussion

Are we not talking about symbols rather than abbreviations here? That is my working assumption and I have edited the title of the RfC accordingly. I have also requested comment at the Astronomy talk page. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 07:52, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

• Note - I've taken the liberty of adding the options above the "poll" itself so that they are a little easier to find/remember. Primefac (talk) 12:02, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

I have the impression that Options 1 and 2 have the least support, with support for one of them coming only from Modest Genius. May I be so bold as to ask Modest Genius which his or her second preference might be, in the event that 1 and 2 were both withdrawn (think of it a single transferable !vote)? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 20:24, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

My order of preference would be 2, 3, 4, 1, status quo. I'll add that to the !vote above. Modest Genius ^talk 13:43, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. That is clear. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 11:59, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

• "AU remains an acceptable option as it is a commonly used symbol in both popular and professional articles." This isn't just a colloquialism: it follows the convention in English to capitalize the letters of a multi-word abbreviation (that is not yet common vocabulary). E.g. FYI, YTD, RSVP, &c. Praemonitus (talk) 17:32, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

• I think it matters whether we are discussing a symbol or an abbreviation. Your argument holds for the latter but not for the former. The reason I prefer au as a symbol is that this symbol has been adopted by international standards bodies, including the IAU. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 19:15, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Regardless of whether you consider it a symbol, AU is an abbreviation for Astronomical Unit. Yes 'au' was adopted by the IAU for the purposes of standard communication within the astronomy community. That doesn't mean Wikipedia needs to stick with it. Praemonitus (talk) 14:20, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
    • I have no problem with "AU" being used as an abbreviation for astronomical unit. My objection is to its use as a symbol. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 14:34, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
• That's not a universal rule for units of measurement. Look at mph/MPH in news reports[1], for example, or psi/PSI, while less common units outside SI tend even more strongly to be abbreviated to or symbolised by lower-case rather than upper-case characters (eg in.w.g. or inH2O rather than INWG, but possibly excepting the British thermal unit, Btu in standards but often BTU in sales literature.) 92.19.25.65 (talk) 09:01, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
  • That is specifically why I said "not yet common vocabulary". 'AU' is hardly as commonplace as 'mph' — most non-astronomy-buffs wouldn't have a clue that AU is an abbreviation if it were in lower case. See the abbreviation article. Praemonitus (talk) 14:24, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

• My position has shifted a little. I think it is time to follow the international standards (BIPM, IAU) by switching from AU to au, and now find options 3 and 4 equally acceptable - I don't think it really matters how quickly the change occurs. The status quo comes a poor third, while options 2 and 3 represent an unacceptable cop-out. I will update my !vote when I find the time. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 04:28, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Closing time?

This has gone quiet and perhaps all the arguments have been presented. How do we precipitate closure? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 21:18, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

 Doing.... Primefac (talk) 21:17, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Followup: Does this divide along discipline lines?

It strikes me as worth asking, so that a specific variant can be recommended for specific contexts (or so we can recommend to use the variant appropriate to the context, rather than listing them out here). E.g., subspecies is abbreviated ssp. in zoology, but subsp. in botany, which uses it as a symbol in scientific names while zoology does not. Wondering if something similar might be going on in, say cosmology and archaeoastronomy‎ versus astrophysics and exoplanetology, or whatever.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:11, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

I think it's just a case of old habits die hard as in "I've used kilobyte to mean 1024 bytes all my life and I'm not planning on changing my ways now!". Dondervogel 2 (talk) 09:03, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

The noughties

Mae West, one of the naughtiest of the late naughties

-EEng

I am trying to improve an article, Churchill, Victoria, that uses the term "late noughties" to describe a time late in the period 2000 to 2009. That grates terribly with me, so I came to the MOS, especially MOS:DECADE, for something better. It hasn't really helped. (Maybe I haven't looked far enough?) Writing "the late 2000s" would be ambiguous. Does it mean 2008, or 2095? No other option suggested there seems to work either. Idea please? And can something be added to this section? HiLo48 (talk) 04:13, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

I'd just go with late 2000s, since for now that's unambiguous, given that events of the past are being narrated. Editors in the year 2095 can worry about what to do at that point. EEng 05:04, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Love the pic. HiLo48 (talk) 06:02, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

The previous decade is referred to as the aughties by just about every American publication I've seen that refers to the decade in such shorthand. Naughties was considered somewhat seriously, but probably just somewhat, as an alternative, IIRC. Dhtwiki (talk) 19:01, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Dhtwiki - Can you provide a link to any quality source using the term "noughties"? (In writing that I am reminded that my spellchecker disapproves of it.) Anything in Wikipedia? HiLo48 (talk) 23:53, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Note: 0 says that 'nought' is UK English and 'naught' is US English.  Stepho  talk  00:38, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Ah, wasn't aware of that difference. Thanks. The article I am working on is Australian. Australian English, while being recognised as a distinct variety of the language, is more like UK English than US English. The "Naughties" sound like they were a much more fun decade. HiLo48 (talk) 00:50, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Yep, I'm Aussie too (WA). I remember in the late 90's the radio stations got all excited about what to call the next decade (noughties/naughties, nothings, oh's, etc) but then it fizzled out and nobody thought of it again. It never really got a name that stuck with a significant amount people.  Stepho  talk  02:24, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

@HiLo48: I have seen "aughts"—not "aughties", come to think of it—in The New Yorker and Harper's Magazine. An article in the first-named magazine is referenced at the "aughts" article, but it doesn't describe the usage they settled on, just the difficulty of coming to a conclusion on which term to use. However, it's my impression that "aughts" is the term generally used, at least in American journalism. So, possibly "noughts" would be the British English equivalent, "noughties" sounding like someone being a bit naughty. Dhtwiki (talk) 00:07, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Using late 2000s isn't ambiguous, since the late 21st century hasn't happened yet. It's always fine to use "the first decade of the 21st century", something more specific like "from 2007 through 2010" or whatever, or some other approach. "The noughties" and "the aughts" are silly slang and aren't encyclopedic wording.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:07, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

It's possible to argue that the aughts are from '00 to '09, whereas the "first decade of the 21st century" is from '01 to '10. That shouldn't really matter for "late aughts", which seems deliberately slightly vague. But I don't know how you can be deliberately slightly vague with any of the "more specific" formulations, so it's not clear that there are any perfect replacements.

I also am not a big fan of "aughts", but I think maybe this is a case where the MoS can do best by saying nothing. --Trovatore (talk) 05:51, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

• The expression "late 2000s" doesn't pass WP:RELTIME, meaning: it will eventually become ambiguous. Will 80 years from now someone think about rewriting sentences that use such expression? And what would be the downside of doing such rewrite without further delay? As it happens, I WP:CHALLENGEd the entire sentence in the Churchill article, as possible WP:SYNTH. Find a reliable source for these assertions, without conflating if it is in separate sources. If a reliable source uses "late 2000s" or "noughties", there's always a possibility to quote literally, in quotation marks, with an in-text attribution that makes clear which noughties or 2000s are meant. --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:41, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

Let's invent Category:Articles with Y2.1k problems and rig some sort of atomic-powered alarm clock to draw attention to it around 2090. EEng 12:10, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

1. Well I mean I have it on good authority that 80 years from now people won't be reading Wikipedia but instead downloading it directly into their brains thru an implanted USB port, and the software which converts all the text to Humano Unilingo will also handle conversions like these.
2. No human person in America uses the term "naught" or "aught" and many don't know what it means.
3. You can link 2000s (decade), altho you have to pipe it, if you think that will help (Narrator: it will).
4. You can also use the template {{Update after}} to alert the steam-powered Encyclopedia Editing Jennys of the future that the situation needs to be addressed.

Herostratus (talk) 04:42, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Good ideas all, though if we're still using USB in 80 years God help us. EEng 04:46, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

"Aught"/"ought" survives in American English in a few stock phrases only, like the pronunciation of .30-06 Springfield. "Naught" is most unheard here.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:32, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Date ranges vs. full birth–death dates in biographical leads

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography#The lead date-range vs. full dates thing
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:39, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Why is the yyyy-mm format not allowed

If u want to use format 2001-07, why is it not allowed on the manual style of dates yyyy-mm-dd is allowed, so why is yyyy-mm not allowed then? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:A000:1103:5EB:1097:199B:8DE1:7098 (talk) 13:16, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Because 2001-07 could mean July 2001, or it could mean 2001 to 2007. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:24, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

And yyyy-mm-dd format isn't allowed universally anyway, just in particular contexts where the format is especially useful; see above for some disputation about how that list may shrink, e.g. because wikitables can now sort the other date formats chronologically.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:02, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

What is the advice for a situation where yyyy-mm-dd is allowed, and the dd is not known? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 16:55, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

You don't use YYYY-MM format. You use something else. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:08, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

This may entail changing all the dates in the article with the YYYY-MM-DD format to a different format, such as Month d, yyyy. Too bad the editor who introduced YYYY-MM-DD into the article in the first place didn't plan ahead. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:15, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

The ISO specification allows for dates along the form of YYYY-DD-00 to indicate that the day is unknown--the spec does not allow for someone to trim digits off. I would personally advocate against it generally and agree that conversion of format is preferable. --Izno (talk) 18:07, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

I have read a draft of the next version of ISO 8601. It has two parts; the first part is supposed to be the same as the 2004 version, and the second part is extensions. You can find it at the Library of Congress if you choose appropriate search terms. (I don't have an official copy of the 2004 official version). Nowhere does it allow for zeros to be substituted for unknown digits. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:48, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Ah, I misremembered what our article says on the point (ISO 8601). It does allow us to specify dates without day precision (YYYY-MM) as well as dates without year precision (or, 2000 did: --MM-DD). --Izno (talk) 19:57, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

The forbidding of yyyy-mm dates bothers me. In an article such as Tesla,_Inc. there are 477 reference. 476 of them have full dates with year, month and day. Only a single reference lacks the day (May 2009). The current guidelines suggest the following ways to handle it:

• Display that single date as 'May 2009', violating WP:DATEUNIFY
• Display that date as '2009-05', violating WP:DATEFORMAT, WP:BADDATE
• Change all the dates to '31 December 2018' or 'December 31, 2018' style, violating WP:DATERETAIN.
• Provide a fake day (eg '01'), which is lying
• Provide a '00', which is new to me and potentially confusing to the majority of readers

Personally I've always thought that readers who see a dozens to hundreds of references with dates in yyyy-mm-dd format will not suddenly think that those exact publication dates have suddenly swapped to inexact date ranges covering years. Especially since 2001-2005 is now the preferred format over 2001-05.  Stepho  talk  21:30, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

I would the urge conversion route, because we have no encyclopedic interest in using reader-hateful ISO dates, except in particular contexts with good reasons. I even say that as a professional geek who works with ISO dates all the time, and is a huge fan of their value in technical contexts, like filenames that sort by date, or the ability to operate easily on dates with a script. We've been permissive of ISO dates mainly because of the wikitable sorting problem, and it has been fixed. If people at that article pitched a fit about it, go with "May 2009" as a minor IAR inconsistency, and let them have their playground; it's not worth the drama.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:15, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

I've seen how people who don't like ISO dates use emotion charged words like 'hateful' and 'pitched a fit'. Far from wanting to convert away from ISO dates, I would prefer to find a way to consistently use ISO in all references on articles that choose to do so. Converting 476 dates just because of a single reference is an unbalanced way to do things.  Stepho  talk  09:49, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

I'm with Stepho on this. It's really hard to misinterpret a date like yyyy-mm when all other dates are yyyy-mm-dd. Should be permitted. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 17:26, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Please read rather than react. You missed both points. You can just IAR, with "May 2009" and move on, without changing any ISO dates. I'm not among "people who don't like ISO dates"; repeat: I'm huge fan of their value in technical contexts. This isn't one, not even in citations.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:26, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

React? You used emotion charged words to urge me to follow a certain action and I calmly expressed that I didn't prefer that reaction. That's called a conversation. Unless you're simple trying to shut it down by ridiculing anyone who doesn't agree with your opinion.

Yes, I read both of your points, even though I was only responding to one of them. As I stated, I prefer not to convert away from ISO dates. Your second option of IAR is what I have been using since the yyyy-mm ban came into place. Older articles that used yyyy-mm I have turned a blind eye to. For new references I have used 'July 2018' type dates. There is no action that is 100% correct under the current rules. I prefer to stay within the rules when possible, so I am asking for clarification (in case I missed something) or possible rule changes.  Stepho  talk  23:59, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict)That particular citation is, I think, fixable. As written right now, it has the form:

[http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/eag/246374.htm Economic Effects of State Bans on Direct Manufacturer Sales to Car Buyers]" ''Economic Analysis Group Competition Advocacy'', May 2009.

It alone, of all the references in that section, is not templated. It probably should be; perhaps like this:

{{cite report |last=Bodisch |first=Gerald R. |url=http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/eag/246374.htm |title=Economic Effects of State Bans on Direct Manufacturer Sales to Car Buyers |orig-year=2009 |date=15 October 2015 |work=Economic Analysis Group |publisher=United States Department of Justice}}

Bodisch, Gerald R. (2015-10-15) [2009]. Economic Effects of State Bans on Direct Manufacturer Sales to Car Buyers. Economic Analysis Group (Report). United States Department of Justice.

The 15 October 2015 date is at the bottom of the page.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:28, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

I did a little digging of my own and found the same data at https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/atr/legacy/2009/05/28/246374.pdf . By pulling apart the URL I think that a date of 2009-05-28 is reasonable to use in the reference. However, it was just an example of the problem and not all examples will be solvable like this one. But I do thank you.  Stepho  talk  05:40, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

I recently worked on an article where the source that ultimately was used was a parish register of vital events. It spanned several decades. Later it was microfilmed, and then the microfilm was put online. WP:CITE#Dates and reprints of older publications says to cite both the original date and the date of the re-publication where you saw it. The original date might be something like 1706-11, or some might write it 1706-1711. If the second year in the range were written with 2 digits, there could be genuine confusion whether it means 1706 to 1711, or November 1706. Indeed, an editor trying to "correct" it should examine the source to discover which is the case.

Such a date (1706-1711) could be valid, in the sense that during the period when the book was only partially full, members of the public could look at it, so in a sense it was "published" throughout that period. Jc3s5h (talk) 00:23, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

A valid point, although thankfully a rare case on articles I work on (mostly automobile articles where the problem cases involve magazines issued as 'XXX Magazine, July 2018'). Perhaps we could say (simialr to your suggestion) that references with date ranges always use 4-digit years on both sides (current rules prefer this but also allow 2001-05).  Stepho  talk  05:40, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

• We were at 217 days. <sigh> EEng 01:15, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

A perennial debate because neither side can really must a good argument. The ISO lovers don't say much more than WP:ILIKEIT and the rules allow it (catering to the techno-nerds like me). The ISO haters don't say much more than WP:IDONTLIKEIT and users are dumb. Speaking anecdotally from my own experience, ISO dates are common in Northern Europe and Asia and English speaking countries near them are getting used to seeing ISO dates. Whereas the US has no such neighbours using ISO dates and are often the most vocal (but not only) voices against them. Not being judgemental, just noting a possible cause.  Stepho  talk  05:40, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

That's an utter distortion of these discussions, though. The usability arguments against ISO dates have been well and consistently articulated, by numerous editors. The primary rationale in favor of using them, date sorting in tables, no longer exists.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:33, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

Really? I follow most of the ISO date discussions and I rarely see any good arguments on either side. Could you point me to some of theses previous discussions that show well articulated points. By the way, I not worried by the sorting issue - the current software seems to handle all allowed forms equally well.  Stepho  talk  09:04, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

Start at the top of this one, and read it through. Cf. WP:SHOWME. There's no point is repeating (or copy-pasting, or diffing) the exact same arguments that have very recently been stated (and were already repeats from previous threads). If you have read it all and are just asserting that you don't find the arguments convincing but did see and understand them, that's an empty thing to say, since you've done nothing to refute them. It's "I don't like it".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:43, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

It doesn't solve the problem, but I'll just note that a properly formatted date range is always distinguishable from an ISO-ish date because it uses a dash rather than a hyphen. Kendall-K1 (talk) 01:55, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

It's that kind of thinking that makes spacecraft crash. EEng 02:51, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Nah, these characters are virtually indistinguishable in some fonts.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:46, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Clarification on using quote marks ( " ) as the unit symbol for inches in infoboxes

Big Ten Inch Recordversus 3"

MOS:UNITSYMBOLS includes "Where space is limited, such as in tables, infoboxes, parenthetical notes, and mathematical formulas, unit symbols are preferred." The "Guidelines on specific units" table lists "in" as the unit symbol for "inch", with the comment Do not use ... ″ (″) ... or quote (").

When I tried to use "inch"[2] or "in"[3] for this infobox single, I was reverted. In their first edit comment, SnapSnap wrote: "Per MOS:UNITSYMBOLS, unit symbols are preferred in infoboxes."[4] In their second, they added "Quotation marks are widely used for inches in music article infoboxes, plus the guideline doesn't mention anything about using "in" instead of quotes in infoboxes."[5]

However, Template:Infobox song#format (which replaced Infobox single) includes: "Do not use " or ″ (double quote) for inches, instead use 7-inch rather than 7" (if it is necessary to abbreviate, use 7 in; see WP:Units)."

It's clear that quote marks ( " ) should not be used for inches in prose, but clarification on what to use in infoboxes, tables, section headings, etc., would be appreciated.
—Ojorojo (talk) 18:35, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

There's a lot of problems with that section (for instance the whole of §4.4.1). I'd take note that the table is headed "Guidelines on specific units" not "Rules ..." and act with common sense. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 20:46, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Articles that use {{Infobox artwork}} (dimensions) and {{Infobox motorcycle}} (wheelbase, height, etc.) use "in" for inches. A guideline is "is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply." {{Infobox song}} should follow the same "generally accepted standard", unless there is a good reason not to do so. —Ojorojo (talk) 21:37, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

I see no justification for ever using " as a symbol for inch on Wikipedia. The only question is whether to spell out the full name (inch) or use the symbol (in). Dondervogel 2 (talk) 22:49, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

The sentence about using "inch"/"in" rather than quotation marks wasn't added to {{Infobox song}} until last year. Using " in single infoboxes when referring to vinyl releases has been the standard for as long as I can remember. snapsnap ^(talk) 23:46, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Please cite the standard. Who published it? The ISO? What you really mean is that it's a common style in writing about music releases. It is not the only style, and it's not one that WP wants because " or ″ a) doesn't mean anything to all readers, and b) even when it does it means something else to many of them (seconds). WP is not written in news style as a matter of policy, and that includes the music journalism subset of news style.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:59, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

• Is a 12" single twelve inches or twelve seconds? EEng 00:24, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

There is little space savings using "7 in record" over "7-inch record". It makes more sense to be consistent when including a conversion "7 in (18 cm) record" rather than "7-inch (18 cm) record", but I don't recall seeing conversions in songs articles. The use 7-inch instead of 7" phrase was added to the Infobox single documentation on June 19, 2016. (Before the two infoboxes were merged in May 2017, Infobox song included it by reference: "Unless otherwise stated here, refer to Template:Infobox single for guidelines on how to use parameters that it shares with Template:Infobox song.") —Ojorojo (talk) 01:55, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

The English Wikipedia is also for non-native speakers of English. Non-native speakers are much more likely to understand 'in' than '"'. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 09:29, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

"Twelve-inch single" ("12 inch single") is a term of art; it is not something that needs to be converted on the fly to "(18 cm)"; it's like 100 metre dash and 2 × 4. Just link the first occurrence of "twelve-inch single" or "12 inch single" to the article on the format, for anyone new to the concept. We should probably use the former; there is no reason to abbreviate it to "12". There is no reason to use the " symbol, which should properly actually be primes (″) not apostrophes, but we have a rule against both. And even if we did provide a conversion, one of the longest-running MOSNUM rules is to spell out the first unit and abbreviate the parenthesized one(s). There's been a later change to say "Consider using inches (but not in.) in place of in where the latter might be misread as a preposition‍—‌but not where the value is followed by a parenthesized conversion e.g. bolts 5 in (12.7 cm) long, or is part of such a conversion (bolts 12.7 cm (5 in) long)." This is inconsistent with the rest of our treatment and with actual practice, and should be reset back to something like: "Consider using inches (but not in.) in place of in where the latter might be misread as a preposition‍—‌but not where the value is part of a parenthesized conversion: bolts 12.7 cm (5 in) long." This will prevent this kind of "12 in (18 cm) single" dispute from arising again. See also WP:Common sense; no one in the world, including thoroughly metricized Europeans, writes gibberish like that in reference to music releases.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:41, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

No one is suggesting that a conversion be added (if this may be misinterpreted, I've struck it). As Dondervogel 2 noted "the only question is whether to spell out the full name (inch) or use the symbol (in)". This discussion focuses on use in an Infobox: the guideline notes the preference for unit symbols in infoboxes, which is "in". But for editors who use 7" or 12" alone (without single, record, etc.), 7-inch or 12-inch may be better understood than 7 in or 12 in. —Ojorojo (talk) 21:01, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

No one is suggesting that in the present discussion, but it's being done anyway. See all the cleanup I did at Twelve-inch single just today, for example [6]. Summary of principles:

• "Twelve-inch single", "ten-inch EP", "seven-inch single", etc., in reference to formats and release types, are terms of art in the music industry, not measurements (many of them are not quite 12 inches or whatever; exact size varies by pressing plant). They're standardized/conventionalized types of vinyl pressings the names of which happen to be derived from measurements (cf. Three Mile Island and other names so derived). Spell them out even if less cautious publishers don't always do so. Using this format also avoids the ugly and often reader-irritating practice of starting a sentence with a numeral. These take a hyphen. Example of good usage: "Twelve-inch singles typically have much shorter playing time than full-length LPs, and thus require fewer grooves per inch."
• "12-inch", "10-inch", "7-inch", used as sizes, are measurements (and in this context are approximate ones). Use the numerals. Use the word "inch" unless it's the metric unit which is given first (which shouldn't happen in this context). These take a hyphen with "inch"; if the unit symbol "in" in used, these take a non-breaking space not a hyphen, even when used adjectivally, same as with any other measurement+symbo pair. Example: "As no 7-inch (18 cm) acetates could be found, a 10-inch (25 cm) blank was used." [If the changed (current) MOSNUM wording is retained, "7 in (18 cm)" would be used, but this is wrongheaded, and the change to the guideline should be reverted, as discussed above.]

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:01, 12 July 2018 (UTC); corrected:  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:25, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Adding to {{Infobox song}} parameter |format=

• Seven-inch single
• twelve-inch single
• three-inch CD single
• five-inch CD single

takes up too much space. There needs to be a way to abbreviates these without using ( " ). —Ojorojo (talk) 14:57, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Then "12-inch single" would probably be appropriate. Or "12&nbsp;{{abbr|in|inch}} single" if desperate, I suppose. We just don't hyphenate between digits and unit symbols (apparently we are now hyphenating between digits and unit names; I corrected the bullets above to reflect this. I dislike how inconsistent this is, but [shrug] c'est la vie.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:25, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Don't forget that writing "12 in" implies the product of the number 12 and the unit inch (twelve times one inch), and this meaning would be corrupted by the presence of a hyphen. It is therefore natural for the punctuation to be different for a mathematical operation, and perhaps for this reason it would be wise to avoid expressions like "12 in single". Your suggestion to write "12-inch single" seems like the best we can do here. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 11:02, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

"12-inch single" is consistent with the infobox parameter guidance. Should "12-inch" be able to stand on its own? SnapSnap does not include an additional descriptor, such as single, record, etc. —Ojorojo (talk) 16:53, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

I guess that would depend on the context. Probably needs to be decided by common sense. The most important think is to avoid " as a symbol for inch. We have a symbol already (in) and we don't need another. As EEng points out, " can also mean seconds of time (or seconds of arc for that matter), and is best avoided. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 17:07, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Shouldn't this be discussed at MOS:MUSIC as well? I'm not against using "inch" instead of " (which, like I said, has been used for ages when referring to vinyl releases), but if you're going to replace " with "inch" in one music article, you might as well replace it in other articles, too. snapsnap ^(talk) 23:07, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

No, per WP:TALKFORK. WT:MOSMUSIC has been notified of this discussion. But we apply measure and unit style consistently, not on a topic-by-topic basis, or we'd have utter chaos. Yes, the same approach (or approaches, if we need a compressed syntax in infoboxes) should be used across all the articles on music stuff); that's a given. I don't think anyone's goint to interpret this as some kind of one-article local consensus discussion, or it wouldn't've been posted here.  :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:37, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Distances measured in chains

WP:TALKFORK note: This discussion started (or re-started recently) at Talk:East Croydon station#Chains, migrated to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Railways#Chains RFC, and has since then continued at Talk:Chain (unit)#Attempt to clean up the lede and the article, including many ideas for changing the article and even removing a lot of information from it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:02, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Chain, chain, chain

-EEng

The British railway people seem to be in the midst of proposing another subject-specific exception to MOS:UNIT, allowing distances to be given in chains rather than km or miles for articles whose sources use that measure. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Railways for details. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:18, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Yes, we are, but in very limited circumstances. The chain (unit) is in current use as a measure of distance for most of Britain's railways. The discussion only affects is use in articles on those railways, and articles on British railway stations. It also is proposing that chains are not introduced where they are not used a a measurement of a railway line, such as High Speed 1.

What we are not doing, is imposing the introduction of chains as a unit across the whole of Wikipedia. It has been long-standing practice that chains get used on UK railway/station articles, but there have been recent discussions about the practice, so the issue is being thrashed out. Mjroots (talk) 04:43, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

@David Eppstein: It's not really an exception so much as a British quirk – MOS:CONVERSIONS says Where an imperial unit is not part of the US customary system, or vice versa […] a double conversion may be appropriate. Chains are apparently still used by the British railway people who build railways in the real world. I would continue further discussion on that talk page per that guideline which discourages splitting discussions. Jc86035 (talk) 05:15, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Tomato, tomahto. MOS:UNIT says "In non-scientific articles relating to the United Kingdom, the primary units for most quantities are metric or other internationally used units,[i] except..." This proposal would effectively add another clause to the list under the word except. In that sense it is an exception. I had no pejorative intention in using that word, only descriptive. In any case, actual opinions on whether this is a good idea would probably be better expressed over on the RFC than here. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:30, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

I see no need for change to this guideline. Mostly because this is already handled by the rule that says, "UK engineering-related articles, including those on bridges and tunnels, generally use the system of units that the topic was drawn up in." - a rule that would seem to allow for chains where appropriate in any case.

Note that in any case the MOS is intended to be applied with occasional exceptions (where there are good reasons for them). This rule does not need to ennumerate every single one of them individually. Kahastok talk 11:53, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Yeah. The nature of the dispute over there appears to me to be that no real WP:IAR rationale can be articulated; it's a bunch of WP:ILIKEIT / WP:SSF stuff, and not a lot of listening to reason. Guideline exceptions don't apply to something wracked by controversy, and forking into five different proposals. That's a full-on lack of consensus. I did post a compromise proposal, and hopefully it'll grow some legs.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:48, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

No explicit statement that unit order should be consistent

Take these chains from my heart and set me free

-EEng

In the railroad discussion (Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Railways#Chains RFC) it is suggested that the order of units should be determined by what is stated in the source supporting a statement. For example, if a source gives a distance as 1 mile 3 chains it would be given in the article as 1 mile 3 chains (1.68 km). On the other hand, if a source gave a distance as 51 km, it would be given in the article as 51 kilometres (32 mi).

I believe it's always been the consensus in this talk page that the order of units should be consistent throughout an article, but the only statement I can find that implies that is this bullet point:

• Where the article's primary units differ from the units given in the source, the {{convert}} template's |order=flip flag can be used; this causes the original unit to be shown as secondary in the article, and the converted unit to be shown as primary: {{convert|200|mi|km|order=flip}} → The two cities are 320 kilometres (200 mi) apart.

A participant in the discussion is disputing the meaning of this point, stating The three preceding bullet points appear to prefer source (conversion) and the one you quote says "the ... flag can be used", not "the flag ... must be used". Incidentaly the quoted middle English (not old English, that was half a millennium earlier) came straight from the Wiki page.

Maybe we should have an explicit statement that the order of units should be consistent throughout an article. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:24, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

I've struck out the mention of Middle and Old English, this was in reference to an earlier point in the discussion. As the participant in question I agree that Jc3s5h's portrayal of the situation in para 1 is a fair statement of the facts, but of course disagree with his final paragraph! Martin of Sheffield (talk) 14:02, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

I agree with Jc3s5h's premise that there is consensus for consistent choice of units. The few times I can recall proposals to follow sources, these have been unsuccessful precisely because of this consensus. I'm not sure we need an explicit statement saying this because it is implied by "Where this manual provides options, consistency should be maintained within an article unless there is a good reason to do otherwise" but I don't object to making it explicit if others feel it is needed. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 14:21, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

I concur as well. However, an other issue raised in that RfC is whether to ever lead with something like "1 mile 3 chains", using a unit that is meanigless to almost every reader unless they're a cricket official or a British railway engineer (and which has inconsistent actual dimensions, even in the UK, being different in Scotland). I think that RfC is a ... trainwreck, because it's presented a selection of only four options with some obvious missing ones.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:10, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Meaningless it may be to some people, but it's not the only such case: I meet people daily who don't know what inches and ounces are - and I work in a shop in England. But our goal is to educate, not suppress, which is why the word chains should be linked on first use. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:39, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Of course unfamiliar units should be linked on first use. Is someone suggesting otherwise? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 13:15, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

There are those - yourself included - who are saying that because chains are perceived to be an unfamiliar/archaic/obsolete/illegal unit (reasons vary between posters), they must be removed. This comes down to "I don't understand it, so I shall remove it". This in turn is WP:IDONTLIKEIT. A much better response to misunderstanding is explanation - and the easiest way of doing that is the wikilink. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:05, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

The lack of familiarity of a unit is not a reason for removing it. When have I ever argued that? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 19:48, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

This was one of them. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:35, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

I see a plea for clarity. No mention of removal. In any case this seems off topic. Let's leave the chains to UK Railways. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 21:43, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Yes, there is consensus that units within an article should be consistent, with standard exceptions (direct quotations, definitions etc.). There is also a longstanding and repeatedly-reaffirmed (more times than I can count) consensus against adopting any system that would meet the description "the order of units should be determined by what is stated in the source supporting a statement". Kahastok talk 21:18, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

And before anyone says, if it's more times than you can count then it must have some support, first see WP:PERENNIAL, and then note that it's generally always been the same editor proposing it every time. Kahastok talk 21:22, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

In the first paragraph of this section it appears clear that first distance was actually 1 mile 3 chains (which for readers who don't understand this is 1.68 km). To reverse the statement reads that the distance as measured was 1.68 km (and for readers who don't understand this is 1 mile 3 chains). There may be an esoteric desire to ensure consistency, but to do so risks: ignoring WP:RF by misleading a reader who is unaware of deep hidden policy or getting perilously close to either WP:OR, WP:SYNTH or both. Why is it only distances that have this obsession? Perhaps all money amounts should be expressed in 2018 US$ for example "According to the Domesday Book of 1086, the Bishop of Rochester was given land valued at $2,600 (17s 4d) in Aylesford, Kent" see Rochester Castle for context. Would this assist the reader? (conversion approximate, the templates only go back to 1209). Martin of Sheffield (talk) 22:30, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Not a comparable case, since shillings and pence aren't an unfamiliar unit to most readers, even Americans (and for other reasons).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:12, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

If exchange rates were fixed there would be an advantage in expressing values and costs in a consistent way (fixed currency), and we would no doubt have debated the pros and cons of an ENGVAR for currencies. But they're not fixed, so such a debate would lead nowhere. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 07:37, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

This is an issue in plenty of other areas, it's just that a discussion on UK railway distances is probably going to end up discussing UK railway distances.

It seems to me that what you are arguing is not that you want the units in the specific source - which would mean that if someone can find just one source in an unconventional unit, even if it's the only one in the world, they can change the source and hence the order to match that source - but for the units that are conventional in the field. Standing consensus gives significant latitude to the latter argument (airline altitudes aren't often given in metres on Wikipedia or elsewhere) and has no truck with the former. Kahastok talk 21:31, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

From NASA's style guide:

Historians of science and technology are rarely the originators of measurements. Both the original unit of measure and its mathematical value can have potential significance for historic interpretation. For example, the use of "rods" or "chains" can serve as important internal evidence for the original date and source of an otherwise unidentifiable document. Historians should not alter an original scientific or engineering notation any more than they should rewrite an original quotation. Thus, the unit of measure actually used by the originating designer, engineer, researcher, etc., should always appear first, in quotation marks if appropriate, then followed by the metric or English equivalent in parentheses. For metric measurements, use the International System of Units.

Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:28, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

@Hawkeye7: That's the NASA style guide and it's only relevant here if you are proposing WP modify its own style guide to follow NASA on this point. Are you? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 07:06, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

NASA or not, it's good advice, and its mention of "any more than they should rewrite an original quotation" harmonises with our own advice concerning the principle of minimal change. That is what I am trying to get to here: we don't arbitrarily mess with units when we can use the original units perfectly well if we also supply an automatic conversion to something more familiar. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:16, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

I understand the logic of the NASA style guide, but (at least until now) it's not how Wikipedia works. In fact it's in direct conflict with our advice on units, which is to use metric units first except in stated exceptions. If you'd like to change that then this is the right place for the discussion. How would you like to see mosnum modified to achieve the historical accuracy you seek? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 11:22, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

The NASA style guide is not a general, or scientific, style guide; it only applies to their historians. Historians write about the past, but many Wikipedia articles are about living people, places that serve a contemporary purpose, concepts that are of current interest in society, mathematics, science, etc. Such articles about contemporary stuff are more directed to providing useful information, and our guideline of consistently listing a primary unit first for each unit of measure is consistent with writing useful articles. I think our policy is more applicable to the wide range of article subjects covered by Wikipedia than a source-units-first guideline. Jc3s5h (talk) 11:50, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

I am inclined to agree.

There have been proposals in the past that in historical contexts we should use the historical units, but this has generally failed to get consensus on the problem of obscure units. It would not serve the reader in general to measure Roman remains in ancient Roman units of measurement.

Note that the NASA guideline does not support source units first, it supports putting the original measurement first. If the railway was designed in miles and chains, but your source has given it in kilometres, the NASA guideline says to use miles and chains. Note also that for engineering projects other than roads in the UK, such a system is already endorsed by WP:UNITS. Kahastok talk 12:37, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

@Dondervogel 2: Here is what WP:UNITS says:

• UK engineering-related articles, including those on bridges and tunnels, generally use the system of units that the topic was drawn up in (but road distances are given in imperial units, with a metric conversion – see next bullet);

Are you arguing that railways are not engineering-related? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:05, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

No. What units are used by British railway engineers on their engineering drawings? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 20:32, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Miles and chains. That is why this plate says "53m 41ch". It is attached to a bridge that was built in 2014-15, so that plate indicates that chains were still in official use four years ago, probably less, since the plate will have been attached towards the end of construction. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:11, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

I find that hard to believe given that the gauge (1.435 m) is metric. Do they use metric for width and Imperial for length? That would be bizarre. Do you have any evidence to support your claim that chains are used on engineering drawings? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 14:28, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

I remember seeing here an interview with a network rail engineer from late 2017 where he does mention they officially have mile and chain usage. It implies they internally use engineering documents in this format, though I have no copy of them. Voello (talk) 17:44, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

I am despairing of you, I really am. Listen. For any NR station, I can turn up two to four recent sources that give the station's position along the line, in MILES AND CHAINS. Got that? Now, since WP:V is policy (unless you can show that it has been repealed), do you have any sources at all that give the positions of all 2,500+ stations in kilometres? I'm waiting. Until you prove that such sources exist and are reliable, I will continue to add distances in miles and chains, and I will source them. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:48, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Redrose64 asked "Are you arguing that railways are not engineering-related?" While the question was not addressed to me, I argue that articles about tunnels and bridges are likely to focus on engineering matters, such as the equipment used to build them or the new materials that had recently been developed to allow the successful construction. But articles about rail lines are less likely to focus on engineering; the main focus may be on what connections are made, time saved compared to previously-existing lines, or social changes due to the feasibility of living in suburbs and working in cities. Jc3s5h (talk) 11:28, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

And see WP:CALC. There is no policy problem whatsoever in doing routine unit conversions to stuff that makes sense to readers and other than the factional sliver of 1% of who know what a chain is (and now that particular chain unit). It's entirely sufficient to give the chains stuff in a quote in the citations, or even give it inline in the material as long as we also give it in metric and in fractional miles (preferably decimal), without making it worse by throwing in yards. This is not difficult. People are just trying to make it difficult out of territorial stubbornness.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:47, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

I don't want to play in your yard

-EEng

I'm not trying to "throw in yards". I have not mentioned them, except to point out that the definition of a chain is 22 yards. What I am trying to do is to add content using sources that consistently give distances miles and chains, yet I am finding resistance all the way from a small number of people who are insistent that I omit all mention of chains because "they are archaic"/"nobody understands them"/"they're not metric"/"they're only used in old documents". Apart from not being metric (which is a bogus objection, given MOS:UNITS), all of them come down to WP:IDONTLIKEIT. What I am asking these objectors to provide is a source for distances along a railway line on the Network Rail system where the primary units are not miles and chains. I don't care if such sources are kilometres, or decimal miles: but nobody has yet come up with one. Stubbornness is one thing; our policy on verifiability is quite another. I stand by the latter. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:34, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Re: Yards – I didn't mean you in particular; using them as what to convert to has been suggested by a couple of people here. I for one didn't advocate omitting chains (see proposal V at the RfC), but including them parenthetically along with the other unit, presumably fractional, decimal miles, in this context.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:53, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

There is no valid WP:V concern in converting from one unit to another. If the distance given by the source is precisely 1 mile and 18 chains it is equally verifiable to say it's 1.225 miles, or 1 mile and 396 yards, or 2156 yards, or 6468 feet, or 1971.4464 metres, or 1.9714464 kilometres. Because the only thing I'm doing in between is converting the units, a simple mathematical calculation per WP:CALC.

You can make a valid case for using chains on the basis that they are the standard units in the field. You can make a valid case for using chains on the basis that they are the units the railway was designed in. But there is no valid case to be made that a simple conversion per WP:CALC makes the measurement unverifiable - your suggestion that it does is plain wrong. Kahastok talk 21:34, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

Does nobody understand a word that I've written? The sources use miles and chains because that's what the industry has used and currently uses, from genesis to the present. Can you - or anybody else - find any sources for distances on Network Rail that are more precise than a quarter of a mile, and yet doesn't use miles and chains? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:47, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

It's kind of a "who cares?" matter. WP isn't written for British railway industry people but for a whole world of them, who mostly only grok the basic units in an overlapping combination of two system (with differing overlap in different countries). There is not WP:V/WP:OR problem with conversions, so we don't actually need chains in the main article text. It seems okay to have them, if don't lead with them; they're just extraneous trivia for something like 99.999% of our readers.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:31, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Maybe not unverifiable, but if the original uses a particular measurement, then it will be harder to locate it in the source if the article only uses another. Otherwise, sure, use metric only. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:57, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

There are ways to deal with this if this is a concern - give the original measurement in the reference, for example. That's not a problem. Note that I am not arguing against using chains, only against using them on the basis that the source that happens to be being used uses them.

@Redrose64: if the reason to use chains is because "that's what the industry has used and currently uses", that's a different matter. There is a reasonable case to be made IMO that we should be using chains because that is the standard unit in use in the field. We don't insist on metres for airliner altitude, even if the plane is located in France. We expect to measure computer and TV screens in inches - everyone else does. The difference compared with your argument is that in this case we continue to use chains for distances along those railway lines conventionally measured in chains, even if the source uses kilometres.

For my part, I have no strong objection to chains on this basis on those lines where they are the conventional measurement, provided that conversions are given to both SI and decimal miles/yards, or (if there are many distances in a short space) provided that they are converted to SI and a conversion rate to miles is given. Kahastok talk 20:38, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

The key to this is "everyone else does" (measure computer monitors in inches, etc.). Everyone, besides British railway industry people and some trainspotters in the UK, does not measure anything to do with railways in chains. It is not a reader expectation.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:32, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: In which case, please give examples of distances in the units that "everyone else" uses, with sources. I should not need to remind you that WP:V is policy. And who are we to decide what the reader expects? Provide them with information, and let them judge for themselves whether to read it or skip it. If there is a perception that the information is not understood by all, then for the love of all that is sacred, link it to an article that explains it. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:00, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Your venting about this is getting weird and weirder, and is actually really out of character. No sources are needed whatsoever that British, Americans, Australians, etc. reckon in kilometres and metres or in miles and feet. Let's not be silly. And actually read WP:V: information has to be verifiable, not verified already unless it's controversial. There nothing even faintly controversial about what units people in the aggregate use and understand. If you really wanted sources proving that the British, say, use a mixture of metrication and reckon in both kilometers/meters and files/feet/sometimes yards, I'm sure that should be easy to find. It's a WP:YOUCANSEARCH matter.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:48, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Weird? I'm getting exasperated here. I'm not arguing for use of miles and chains across the board. What I am asking for is a demonstration that the national railway system of Great Britain is measured in anything other than miles and chains. You could, for example, turn out a document or website that explicitly says that East Croydon station is 16.66 km from London Bridge; or that it is 10.35 miles from London Bridge; or even 10 miles and X yards. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:52, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

My baby's got me locked up in chains

-EEng

@Redrose64: This took a grand total of 12 seconds from opening Google in a new tab, entering a search of km "East Croydon" "London Bridge", to finding it – not counting copy-paste time to put it into this talk page: [7] Trainline, "Trains from East Croydon to London Bridge, Today at 16:04"; quote: "Distance: 9 miles (14 km)". I did mention WP:YOUCANSEARCH, right? There are pages and pages of results like this (also for maile "East Croydon" "London Bridge", and of course if you put it different destination stations). Since we can, obviously, find exactly what you say we can't find, will you please now drop this? PS: Try chains "East Croydon" "London Bridge", and not that you get barely more that 1/10 as many results, and the vast majority of them are false positives, or WP itself and re-users of our content. Pretty much no one outside of insider "train stuff" publications uses chains any longer. Most of us already knew that, of course.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:08, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

That web page does not seem particularly accurate; without decimal places, 9 miles (14 km) could mean anything from 8.5 to 9.49 miles, or 13.5 km to 14.49 km - but even so, this is significantly different from the 10 miles 28 chains (16.7 km) that reliable sources give and well outside the margin of error due to rounding. The web page also does not give the basis for the distance - I suspect, based on the aforementioned discrepancy, that it is the distance as the crow flies and not the distance along the railway, which is what we are discussing here. I therefore contend that it should not be considered a reliable source for the purposes of verifiability. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:58, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

This websiteoffers the ability to calculate as the crow flies distances within the UK Grid: it calculates the distance between London Bridge station and East Croydon station to be 14.44 km. Google Maps gives the shortest pedestrian route between the two to be about 10.2 miles. Of course, neither are in themselves reliable sources, but they do suggest that a bit more checking would have cast some doubt on the validity of the 9 miles result as a game-decider (a similar tale to the Scots chain?) Rjccumbria (talk) 18:18, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

I was not proposing that we adopt the NASA style guide (although we do use it on space-related topics); I was posting it because it puts the argument for putting the original measurements first. The argument for consistency has not been advanced so clearly. I particularly note the comparison to quotations, where our MOS demands deviation for consistency with the source. I think as an historian because I am one; the point about non-historical articles is accepted. But yes, in a Roman history article we use the Roman miles of the original text, with the usual conversion to SI units. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:03, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Do you really think we should present every measurement of the Terracotta Army first in the Qin-dynasty versions of the bu and li? Are you sure about that?

The advantage of consistency is that it is jarring to the reader to have the distance from London to Edinburgh in miles first in one sentence and in kilometres first in the next. It looks unprofessional and unencylopaedic for us to start talking about the lowest 50 centimetres (20 in) of an 8-foot (2.4 m) statue. The reader is left thinking about the units and not about the topic - meaning, most likely, that such a text won't last long before someone fixes it so that it is consistent.

(And that's before we get to the editors who will declare that measurements in their preferred system are always the originals and so will flip every unit they can find to that system. Don't think it can't happen - it wouldn't be the first time.) Kahastok talk 22:30, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Do we have (copies of) the original engineering drawings for the terra-cotta army? Or documents close to the appropriate time period? If so, it is probably best to use those units. But for measurements made (much) later, in a more current unit system, I don't see a reason to back convert. One complication with unit conversion is significant figures and uncertainty. Many values are written with an appropriate number of figures, given the uncertainty in the measurement. Conversions will often either lose precision, or imply greater precision than the original. (This happens naturally on rounding decimal values.) As to railway gauge, I suspect that it was converted, with appropriate rounding and within uncertainty, years ago. This is even done in the definition of many units, when new methods allow for increased accuracy in measurement. If the primary source uses a certain unit, and even if the data comes from a reliable secondary source, it seems reasonably to use the primary source unit, with conversions to modern units. If there is no primary source, with reported measurements being made much later, I don't see any reason to use units that might have been used at the time. Gah4 (talk) 18:28, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

Also, one should be careful when changing units, as sometimes units imply more than is obvious. Torque is measured in N m (Newton meters) and not dimensionally equivalent J (Joules). I recently found in an air museum, a jet engine with the thrust in pounds, converted to kilograms. Yes the weight of an engine in pounds converts to kilograms, but thrust converts to Newtons. (The museum agreed, and is changing the exhibit.) Not so obvious, the engines for propeller planes are rated in HP (Horsepower), converted in metric to kW. It seems that the Smithsonian has rules for units in airplane exhibits that they follow. The unit of VA (Volt Ampere) is different from the dimensionally equivalent W (Watt) as it doesn't include the power factor. Gah4 (talk) 10:55, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

@Gah4: Yours is the first sensible argument I have heard in favour of the use of chains. The question becomes a balance between familiarity and precision. That is a debate worth having, not here but at UK Railways. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 19:26, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

A lot of the time it isn't known what the original unit was because the source doesn't tell us. Or there might be two original units from different measurements made at different times. This assumes an ideal world where there is a single primary source for the measurement that is always available. Even if it's a modern measurement, generally there isn't. And in any case such a system does potentially leave us talking about the bottom 50 centimetres of an 8-foot statue because the statue was built in feet but the measurement of the bottom was made in centimetres.

Meanwhile, in the vast majority of instances the question of precision can be readily resolved without fuss. You make this out as a huge issue. It really doesn't have to be. And where we need to acknowledge the unit in the source, when it differs from the text, we can use the order=flip flag on the {{convert}} template to give consistency.

In the case of chains, for example, if you give the measure in decimal miles to 2 decimal places (i.e. to within 17.6 yards), you'll get the same kind of precision as you would if you gave it to the nearest chain (22 yards). Difficult to argue that the reader is going to be seriously misled by being told that it's 20.23 miles instead of 20 miles, 18 chains (and that's even with a deliberately awkward conversion). Kahastok talk 21:51, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

Okay, I have seen the error of my ways and have converted British logistics in the Falklands War to putting SI units first (with the proscribed exceptions) per MOS:UNIT. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:30, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Given that we have WP:GS/UKU which explicitly bars systematic conversion of UK-related articles between systems (because of the history of disruption caused by people doing that en massse), and given that measurement systems on Falklands-related articles have made it on to WP:LAME, I'm not sure that was a very good idea. Kahastok talk 20:37, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Oh. I wasn't aware of WP:GS/UKU. I'm almost the sole author of the article, which is at FAC. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:56, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Zoiks. GS/UKU needs to be mentioned in the guideline, at least in a footnote. I've been here for 12+ years and wasn't aware of that either, so we can't expect the average editor to know about it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:29, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Done [8].  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:32, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Probably a good idea. Kahastok talk 20:08, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

FWIW: if there's consensus at FAC for the change, go for it. If there's consensus anywhere else for the change, go for it. For my part, if I objected I'd have given you the formal warning, not a suggestion on MOSNUM talk. A major aim of the general sanctions is to prevent people going from article to article to article flipping every one to their preferred system - something that has happened on a massive scale in the past. This is clearly not what is happening here. Kahastok talk 20:08, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

• NASA's so-called style guide is a profound disservice to humanity. Tony (talk) 05:01, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

  Yeah, WP doesn't follow the NASA style guide, even in articles about NASA. Their advice on this particular matter is a reason to include mention of the original unit in many cases, but not to lead with it. It's written from a context of doing primary (original) research, which WP does not; the idea that unusual or obsolete units "can serve as important internal evidence for the original date and source of an otherwise unidentifiable document" doesn't apply here. We do not rely on subtle textual cues to indicate what our sourcing it, we cite it directly and explicitly.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:27, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

  Expanding on  SMcCandlish's comment, if mentioning a source value that includes chains interrupts the flow of the text too much, the value can be given in the citation; this may be helpful if using endnote citations but less helpful if using parenthetical citations. Jc3s5h (talk) 11:22, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Scottish chain and other chains

Chain reaction

-EEng

Do we have a source for the repeated claim that in Scotland the chain is 74 feet as distinct from the proposition that once upon a time(before the Weights and Measures Act of 1824?) there was a Scots chain of 74 feet? Before customary measures were standardised throughout the UK, there was indeed a Scotch chain and its length was indeed equivalent to 74 yards; but if we cannot use a modern customary unit because two hundred years ago the word used to mean something different in Scotland we hit the slight problem that in both Scotland and England there were 80 chains to the mile and the Scotch mile was longer than than the English one. Rjccumbria (talk) 17:20, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Rowlett's Dictionary of Units defines a chain as 22 yd, 100 ft or 20 m. Whether 74 ft happens to be in use today seems a little academic, but if I were looking for a source I would try Chain (unit), where I see 55.5 ft and 20.2 m both mentioned as in "contemporary use". Assuming that article provides references for both, we would then be able to source five different values: 55.5 ft, 66 ft, 100 ft, 20 m, 20.2 m. Take your pick. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 17:46, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

I refer you to my post of 09:38, 14 July 2018 at WT:UKRAIL. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:13, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

According to Tables for converting Scottish land measures & rates into imperial compiled under the direction of the Scottish Society of Land Surveyors (Edinburgh, 1826, p. iv) there were two chains in use in Scotland, 74 ft and 74.1196 ft. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:22, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

@Dondervogel 2: That would be 100 links (of 7.92") not 100'. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 22:34, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Verbatim text reads "American surveyors sometimes used a longer chain of 100 feet, known as the engineer's chain or Ramsden's chain". So 100 ft is claimed but in past tense. That still leaves 4 different definitions in use today. How ambiguous can you get? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 22:59, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Break these chains

-EEng

Considering that the discussion is about lengths on British railways it might be germane to quote the whole entry:

a unit of distance used or formerly used by surveyors. Although the unit is not often used today, measured distance along a road or railroad is commonly called chainage regardless of the units used. The traditional British surveyor's chain, also called Gunter's chain because it was introduced by the English mathematician Edmund Gunter (1581-1626) in 1620, is 4 rods [1] long: that's equal to exactly 1/80 mile, 1/10 furlong, 22 yards, or 66 feet (20.1168 meters). The traditional length of a cricket pitch is 1 chain. Gunter's chain has the useful property that an acre is exactly 10 square chains. The chain was divided into 100 links. American surveyors sometimes used a longer chain of 100 feet, known as the engineer's chain or Ramsden's chain. (However, Gunter's chain is also used in the U.S.; in fact, it is an important unit in the Public Lands Survey System.) In Texas, the vara chain of 2 varas (55.556 ft) was used in surveying Spanish land grants. In the metric world, surveyors often use a chain of 20 meters (65.617 ft). See also shackle and shot [2] for anchor chain lengths.

- there is only one relevant definition: 4 rods = 1/80 mile = 1/10 furlong = 22 yards = 66 feet, and it has been this way for 400 years. As well as railways and cricket pitches, it is part of the original definition of the acre: 1 furlong (ie furrow length) x 1 chain, or supposedly the area one man can plough in a day. It's the sort of thing I remember learning by rote at age 10 so ought not to be too difficult for our readers. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 12:49, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

You challenged my assertion that a chain can be 100 ft. I quoted the text relevant to that point. The rest of the definition is useful though because it makes clear that the metric definition of 20 m remains in use. In addition there's the engineer's chain, which is 100 ft. At the very least any use of the chain needs to distinguish between these 3 possibilities (20 m, 22 yd, 100 ft). Dondervogel 2 (talk) 14:10, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Just for giggles, this site lists five kinds and five lengths of chains, and that doesn't include any Scottish chains. - Donald Albury 16:58, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

It's a website based in India, and so not relevant here. Only one chain is used in measuring British railways: that of 22 yards or 1/80 mile (and when {{convert}} is given the |lk=in parameter, our article chain (unit) is linked, which explains this). If you have sources which state that some other length of chain was used for railway work in the UK, please provide it. Otherwise, please stop trying to muddy the issue. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:15, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

The ambiguity in the word chain (when used as a unit) is very relevant here. Another problem is its unfamiliarity. These two reasons combined are why many editors are not comfortable with seeing chains used in preference to other units that are both more familiar AND less ambiguous. I do not object to the use of unfamiliar units in principle (on the contrary, I applaud them where they help to reduce ambiguity), and I would support a proposal that addresses both concerns. Some suggestions:

• Can the ambiguity be addressed by always linking to Gunter's chain instead of Chain (unit)?
• Can the unfamiliarity be addressed by citing the distance in miles (or km) first?

Dondervogel 2 (talk) 21:01, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

The first is a matter for Template talk:Convert. The second is simply untrue - we write {{convert|1|mi|23|chain|km|lk=in}} which emits 1 mile 23 chains (2.1 km) and there is no way that you can claim that I am "shoving chain into the reader's face before the mile". --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:05, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

My apologies for the hasty and inappropriate choice of words (I was more careful when rephrasing as a question), but I simply don't agree that your proposal addresses either concern (and I am not alone). I can agree to something like 1.3 mi (2.1 km; 1 mile and 23 chains). The important thing is to a) start with a familiar unit (mi or km - avoid chains in primary unit) first and b) when the reader reaches the chain, make sure it is apparent that it is equal to 22 yd. Dondervogel 2 (talk)

The days of the old school yard

-EEng

I think there is a misunderstanding here. To anyone of a certain age born in Britain (and we are still here!) the chain is totally familiar as part of the standard set of units of linear measure: 12 in. = 1 foot; 3 feet = 1 yard; 22 yards = 1 chain; 10 chains = 1 furlong; 8 furlongs = 1 mile. This is "the" (English at least) chain, and it is not normally known as "Gunter's". (It's also of course the length of a cricket pitch.) I do not honestly see a good rationale for "Gunter's chain" being a separate article at all - I guess this is simply the origin of the chain unit, and should be part of that article. (See Blackburn (1825) p. 5.) Imaginatorium (talk) 09:54, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Unless you have a suggestion to improve mosnum, a better place to comment would be Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_UK_Railways. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 10:40, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

I'm of a similar 'certain' age (50+) but born in Australia. While I know inches, feet, yards and miles (we changed to metric in the 1970s when I was a boy), chains are completely unfamiliar to me. My father would probably know but I don't. I would assume that a great many non-UK readers would be in a similar position of not knowing what a chain is or that there are multiple definitions. To me, chains are a foreign word like the Indian crore but with ambiguity.  Stepho  talk  10:51, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Stepho-wrs, we must be about the same age; mine was the very last first-grade class in Victoria to learn imperial as well as metric. We only got as far as ounces, pounds and stones, and inches, feet, yards and chains, before word came down from Mt Sinai and the syllabus changed to metric only. All we learned about chains was that a cricket pitch is one chain long. But it was taught. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:24, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

I went to school in the UK since the education system was changed to metric. We weren't formally taught imperial units at all - but inevitably in non-technical subjects they were used informally as teachers were old enough to prefer them.

But once we got home, the sorts of things we learnt from our parents tended to be imperial. When the culture uses feet and inches to measure height, children pick them up. And when your main experience of how far things are is from road signs in miles, you tend to end up preferring miles over kilometres.

But that only applies to units that are actually common currency. I didn't know what a chain was - how long, how many to a mile - until I came across this discussion. And if you'd asked I'd have probably said something closer to 100 yards than 22. Kahastok talk 20:40, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

That is exactly why a conversion to more familiar or SI units should follw the original. Consider: '"On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at" (Standard English: On Ilkley Moor without a hat)' and compare to 22 miles 39 chains (36.2 km). In both cases an unfamiliar term is presented as the original, and then translated/converted for the benefit of those unfamiliar with the historic local usage. The only ambiguity is from those who are seeking to confuse with obscure local variants. The surveyor's chain has been standardised for around 400 years. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 19:46, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Standardised as 66 ft, 100 ft, 20 m, 74 ft, 55.5 ft, 20.2 m or 74.1196 ft? If we not sure which standard it is then it isn't really standardised. But at least the km figures remove the ambiguity for those that want to do some arithmetic.

Regardless, the guideline says SI first, with certain nation strong ties exceptions. That seems to apply to the the entire article. So either the entire article has SI first or the entire article has SI second. I don't see why specific sentences should be different.  Stepho  talk  22:55, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

This is not what the text of WP:UNITS says, nor what it is intended to mean, nor how it is applied in practice. There is no earthly reason why the fact that a distance is in miles should have to mean that all the temperatures have to be in Fahrenheit. Kahastok talk 08:14, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Standardised at 66 feet/22 yards/one-tenth of a furlong, since at least the Weights and Measures Act 1824 and probably even earlier. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:05, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Gunter's chain of 22 yards as used for surveying until recently dates from 1620. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 20:43, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Back on the chain gang

-EEng

Is there a proposal regarding chains related to this page in particular? If not, can I suggest this move to the project talk page to keep all the discussion on the whys and wherefores of chains together? Kahastok talk 21:41, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

That's where it started but David branched it here, presumably to seek views from a different set of editors with different priorities. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 21:44, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

There's no proposal specific to chains on this page. David Eppstein informed mosnum editors of the debate at UK railways and the discussion continued at UK railways. Then Jc3s5h made the more general point here out that a long-standing consensus that order of units should be maintained throughout an article had never been made explicit. That point was being debated on mosnum when the Scottish chain reared its head and the discussion went off on a tangent. The discussion would not be out of place at Chain (unit). Dondervogel 2 (talk) 23:24, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Clean up of Chain (unit)

See Chain (unit) talk page for a new discussion on improving that specific article. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 11:32, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Indic date mess

Could someone who understands the dating system(s?) of India/Hinduism please clean up Ram Charan (guru) and Ram Kishor to conform to MOS:DATE and WP:USEENGLISH? It's pretty impenetrable to anyone who isn't a Hindi speaker, and the material is veering back and forth between calendars in a very confusing way.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:28, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Well my understanding is that they really don't have much of a dating system but instead use arranged marriages a lot of the time. EEng 14:54, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Wrong. The lot is a unit of weight (or possibly mass, but definitely not time) - shame on you. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 15:15, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Hee haw.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:11, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

We do the best we can with the material available. EEng 05:18, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Joking aside, these articles badly need repair by someone who can do it correctly.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:33, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Fractions in titles

If composed fraction characters are to be avoided in prose, should 6½ Avenue and similar titles be changed? Obviously {{frac}} can't be used in article titles, so maybe there should be guidance for this. (Note that 6+1⁄2 Avenue is actually between Sixth Avenue and Seventh Avenue, so I'm not sure how it's supposed to be pronounced.) Jc86035 (talk) 11:06, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

<grin>Call it 6.5 Avenue and keep the SI pundits happy? ;-) </grin> Martin of Sheffield (talk) 12:04, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

That won't work: {{convert|6.5|avenue|boulevard}} results in a template error. Kendall-K1 (talk) 20:59, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Unless a proponent of the current title can cite a reliable source showing that the City of New York has knowingly officially designated it as the Unicode character U+0036 followed by the unicode character U+00BD, and that the use of these characters is not merely the choice of some secretary or typesetter, then we are free to render it as best suits our technology: 6 1/2. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:24, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Redirects can help - Sopwith 1½ Strutter has redirects from Sopwith 1-1/2 Strutter, Sopwith 1 1/2 Strutter, 1½ Strutter and 1-1/2 Strutter, making sure that the article can be found, which is the most important thing.Nigel Ish (talk) 19:54, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Concur with Jc3s5h (whom I assume is no relation to Jc86035, though they may come from the same illustrious Jcrandomstuff lineage, the Dukes of URL). We should be using 6 1/2 style. Probably worth mass-WP:RMing the ones using the Unicode fractions.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:11, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Monetary values guideline unclear

MOS:CURRENCY states, "Conversions should be in parentheses after the original currency, rounding to avoid false precision (two significant digits is usually sufficient, as most exchange rates fluctuate significantly), with at least the year given as a rough point of conversion rate reference; e.g. Since 2001 the grant has been 10,000,000 Swedish kronor ($1.4M, €1.0M, or £800k as of August 2009), not ($1,390,570, €971,673 or £848,646)". I find this guideline unclear. Why is 1,390,570 rounded just around 10k to 1.4M but 848,646 to 800k -a difference of almost 50k? Wouldn't it be better to round it up to 850k? After all, the guideline itself says that two significant digits is usually sufficient, so it is unclear why it was rounded to 800k. In addition, why use two different formats for millions in the same sentence, 10,000,000 and 1.4M? Thinker78 (talk) 07:21, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Mixing styles in mosnum is common. Its purpose is to usually to illustrate that multiple styles are permitted, and I'm guessing that is also the purpose here. In any one article consistency is encouraged. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 07:31, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

• I actually think that our guideline is relatively clear regarding this specific point - it is just the example that is wrong, as you've rightly pointed out Thinker78.

Consequently I intend to change the example to: "Since 2001 the grant has been 10,000,000 Swedish kronor ($1.4M, €970k, or £850k as of August 2009), not ($1,390,570, €971,673 or £848,646)"

(Personally I don't believe it is appropriate to encourage multiple styles within the same conversion but, if we did need an example of that aberration, it might be: "Since 2001 the grant has been 10,000,000 Swedish kronor ($1.4M, €970k, or £850,000 as of August 2009), not ($1,390,570, €971,673 or £848,646)" if this specific part of the guideline were followed) --BushelCandle (talk) 10:41, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

Proposal: End "date-forking" into different styles for publication and access/archive in same cite

Should MOS:DATE stop explictly permitting mixed date styles within the same citation, and recommend a consistent date format as we otherwise use article-wide?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:29, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

• Yes. There is no sensible reason to use two conflicting date formats in the same article's citations, one style for publication dates and a different one for access and archive dates. Any time time I encounter this and have time and inclination to do it, I normalize them to the majority style of the article, and in 12+ years I've been reverted on this only one time, and groused at about it only one other time. That's two disagreements in the course of cleaning up many thousands of inconsistent dates.

  I do not believe there is actual consensus support for this wacky "date-forking" notion; it's something someone came up with for unclear reasons, against common sense, way back when, and it's just been lingering around for no reason.

  Ending this would handily also allow us to compress two otherwise redundant sections of material in the guideline into one more concise one.
   — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:35, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

  I hate to say it but I've come to appreciate the visual distinction between the "actual" date of the source (in human-friendly MDY or DMY format) and the techie access/archive dates (in YYYY-MM-DD). It's your funeral but are you sure you want to poke this particular wasps' nest? EEng 20:46, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

  Yes, I'm immune. I would buy the "visual distinction" thing if there were a rule to use ISO dates for archive/access and it were consistently employed, but the opposite is the case. Some people do it manually, and some tools are doing it by default; that's the only reason its in use at all. See previous ISO dates discussion on this page, still open. A few nerds like this style, but it's not an average human preference (even among professional nerds).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:36, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

  The main problem with the ISO style dates is that most people do not know what order the elements are in and you get all sorts of combinations, some causing invalid dates to be flagged. Personally I would like to ditch ISO dates as they are not clear, which in turn would remove the problem of mixed dates in references. A rather larger nettle to grasp! Keith D (talk) 22:58, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

  ISO covers several formats, but the principal one concerning us is yyyy-mm-dd. What is unclear about that? Perhaps there are some people inclined towards making yyyy-dd-mm dates, but strictly speaking those are not ISO. And anyone doing that is unlikely to be aware of ISO's more esoteric formats. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:24, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

  Those who know about the MOS know that it should be yyyy-mm-dd but many of the numeric dates are not in that format all sorts of combinations are given by editors, yyyy-dd-mm, dd-mm-yyyy, mm-dd-yyyy etc. many of which are ambiguous, even yyyy-mm-dd format can be ambiguous when you are unsure if the user specified it in yyyy-dd-mm format. Eliminating this format from the MOS removes that ambiguity. Keith D (talk) 10:10, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

  MOS specifically disallows NN-NN-NNNN exactly because it's ambiguous as to DD-MM-YYYY vs. MM-DD-YYYY. So that leaves NNNN-NN-NN, and I challenge you to point to any significant real-world use of NNNN-NN-NN that's not YYYY-MM-DD other than Kazakhstan and Latvia – get with the program, Kazakhstan and Latvia. EEng 13:46, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

  As EEng says: we disallow nn-nn-nnnn and other such. All that we are really concerned about here is whether a date in yyyy-nn-nn form should be interpreted as yyyy-mm-dd or yyyy-dd-mm. If we haven't already disallowd yyyy-dd-mm we should do so. That some editors get it wrong is a matter for education. Just because some small number of editors get it wrong is no reason to ban all ISO yyyy-mm-dd formating. That would be like banning streets because some people drive on the wrong side. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:58, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

  Yes, YYYY-DD-MM is indeed disallowed, in the sense that the only NNNN-NN-NN format allowed is YYYY-MM-DD. EEng 15:42, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

  The proposal was about mixing dates within a single citation. Or was it a back door proposal to forbid ISO dates? Please either make it clear which is actually being proposed or stick to the topic.  Stepho  talk  22:35, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

• No, YYYY-MM-DD is an internationally recognized, unambiguous, and valid date format. And the visual distinction is between access-dates and publication dates is both visually pleasing and helpful. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:15, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

• Yet the entire point of the discussion above is it is not unambiguous to our readers. It's unambiguous to computers and to people who work with technical material a lot.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:11, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

• While YYYY-MM-DD is standard almost everywhere and I find it's very commonly used on e.g. the Chinese Wikipedia, I think it still risks being ambiguous for some editors and should therefore be avoided. Jc86035 (talk) 17:35, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

  Just to be clear, I'm not even suggesting that it be "banned"; rather, we should not be using two different date formats in the same citation.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:11, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

• Update: I turned this into an RfC and advertised it around a bit. MOS:NUM tends to be a bit on the walled-garden side, so broader input would be of value.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:29, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
• Strongly oppose changing the existing guidelines: access and archive dates have a different function to publication dates, and are usefully de-emphasized by the abbreviated style of YYYY-MM-DD dates. It ain't broke, so don't try to fix it. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:25, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
• Strongly oppose. I happen to think that date-forking is a useful style for emphasizing the dates that are important to readers in citations and de-emphasizing the dates whose primary importance is for editors. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:13, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

  Assuming that were not a false dichotomy, the sane way to do that would be to put the latter in a smaller font, or just suppress their rendered display with a CSS class by default. What you're saying is rather like "It's a good idea to save all my personal correspondence in MS Word format, and all my business correspondence in OpenDoc format, all government-related stuff in PDF format, and all my other papers in RTF format, so I can tell them apart", when saving them to different directories would make immensely more sense. You're misunderstanding what differing formats are for, and coming up with a weird kluge to try to leverage them for a different purpose than that for which they were intended. We don't have different date formats to trick readers into ignore some of them. But really, the entire premise is faulty. As a savvy reader, I actually care quite a lot about the access-date, since it tells me when someone last checked that this source verified the claims to which it is attached; WP:HIJACK is a constant problem.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:02, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose. For various reasons, but also one that goes against the very premise of the question: that there is a very "sensible reason" for using two contrasting formats. Particularly, to better distinguish publication dates from access (or "last checked") dates. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:24, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - I prefer to cite the date of the work as it is cited in the work, while putting access date in the general date format followed throughout the article. Renata (talk) 23:07, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
  • I don't believe that variation is allowed by the current MOS. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:01, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

    Whether or not it is current allowed, it should be--and possibly should even be required. Mterial take mfrom the work should be taken exactly.It's part of the way the work is identified. DGG ( talk ) 19:42, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

    So you propose that if the work is in German then our citation could have a date like '30 Juni 2018'? Japanese references could show 30 June 1980 as '1980年6月30日' or '55年6月30日' (emperor accession dates). China could show it as '1980年6月30日'. Taiwan could show it as '1980年6月30日' or '69年6月30日'. Middle Eastern countries have other calendars where all fields differ from the western calendar. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ‎ Stepho-wrs (talk • contribs) 22:47, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

    Yeah, this doesn't make any sense at all. DGG is confusing quotation with metadata.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:02, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

    • I agree with David Eppstein, all dates of a particular type, such as publication dates, should be in the same format. But if the publication date is a season, or other such period, such as "Autumn term 2007", the information conveyed in the citation should be the same as in the publication. Such seasons or the like should be made consistent; if an article had sources with publication dates "Fall 2001", "Autumn of 2001, and "autumn issue MMI" they would all be written "Autumn 2001". Jc3s5h (talk) 00:44, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. This is just going to lead more people to "fix" things that aren't broken. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 20:08, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
• Support A single date format should be used within a single citation. That style could be '1 December 2018', 'December 1, 2018' or '2018-12-01'.  Stepho  talk  22:35, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - largely per Renata because the publication date formatting given by the source might have to be preserved where possible as an aid for researchers in finding that particular volume. A hard rule against such might scratch the itch of detail-oriented MOS writers, but such pedantry doesn't actually help readers or editors. -- Netoholic @ 14:39, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

  I don't follow this rationale at all. We have |date=3 March 2017...|access-date=2018-07-23 not for any reason that has anything to do with the wording in the text, but because people and some tools have been using ISO dates "just because". It has nothing to do with "pedantry" or with source verifiability. I don't think you've actually understood the proposal.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:37, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

  Chicago Manual of Style rejects the notion that a date in a citation should be written in the same style as in the source. On page 496 of the 17th ed. Chicago gives this example note citation:

  4. "Wikipedia Manual of Style," Wikimedia Foundation, last modified April 7, 2016, 23:58, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style.

  Checking that URL and modification date and time shows a time stamp on the history page of "23:58, 7 April 2016‎", which is a different format. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:57, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

  Yeah, this notion that we should mimic the style used in the source isn't supportable by any on- or off-site reference. It's actually exactly antithetical to everything MOS:DATE says, which is to use a consistent date style in the WP same article, and to normalize date formats to that style (including getting rid of ordinals) – other than it weirdly permits a divergent style for access and archive dates in the same citation, which is the only thing this RfC is about.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:09, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose I sometimes appreciate the visual contrast between the real date and the URL access date that is seen in many articles, but overall I think that WP:CITEVAR is the main point: You should be allowed to set this as a desired style (e.g., to provide more compact citations), and if it's not explicitly permitted, someone will try to declare that it's banned (again).
  That said, whenever these things are being considered, my ultimate preference is that whatever happens in the CS1 template system is whatever makes maintenance easier for User:Trappist the monk. If he wants "date forking" to stop, then I'll go along with his preference. (Also, did you know that you don't have to re-type dates in the ISO format? Just fill in the |df= and CS1|2 will automagically fix it for you.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:39, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

Who can resist EEng's challenge to find formal use of kUSD, kEUR and similar?

Well, obviously not me, and here's a few examples to get us started:

1. "a typical lab equipment purchase of 100 KUSD" (Modern Biopharmaceuticals)
2. "15 kUSD/capita"
3. approximate cost of 85-100 KEUR
4. (paraphrased) initially cost was 100 K USD, now more than 1 M USD
5. ISO 80000-1 Quantities and Units - General: The SI prefixes are also used together with the ISO currency codes, e.g.
   • 1 kEUR = 1 000 EUR (European euro)
   • 1 kGBP = 1 000 GBP (British pound)
   • 1 MUSD = 1 000 000 USD (US dollar)
   • 1 GSEK = 1 000 000 000 SEK (Swedish crown)

Dondervogel 2 (talk) 16:02, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

References

I hope you don't mind my numbering your items.

From the title, 3 is a presentation

5 is just a technical list, not a usage example

As to the rest, I'm not sure that's the kind of formal nontechnical (I should have said that) writing I meant. It's one thing to condense $56,000,000 to $56M but changing $56,000 to $56k seems unnatural and fussy for little benefit.

EEng 17:11, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

Yes, you certainly should have said that. Before anyone else sets off on a wild K goose chase, what other publications are you excluding? The Times? The Guardian? The Independent? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:21, 28 July 2018 (UTC) [9]

(don't mind at all - simplifies discussion)

(ec) I'm happy to withdraw #3 for the reason you say. I think the ISO standard is valid though because it's an indication of international consensus, and is intended for formal use. My main point is that it cost very little effort to find these - I'm sure there are plenty more to be found. Whether there's a benefit in introducing the abbreviation is a different question. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 17:26, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

I don't know why I didn't think this through before, but the important point is that MOS:CURRENCY doesn't call out this use (though it does give M for million and bn for billion). EEng 19:13, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

I guess we'll have to forgive you, just this once. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:16, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

Headings and anchors and such

@Ham105 and EEng: Please stop talking over edit summaries. --Izno (talk) 14:20, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

While I feel there izno need for a full-blown discussion on this minor point, I was just saying that myself [10]. EEng 14:28, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, @Izno:. I have framed a more specific basis for discussion in the new section below. -- Ham105 (talk) 16:30, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

DATERANGE style guidelines

Following the shortcut MOS:DATERANGE currently leads to a long section covering more than 25 style guidelines for date ranges. It is cumbersome for the reader to find specific guidelines within. Proposal: The text be organised into subsections:

1. Simple ranges: year–year, day–day, month–month
2. Ranges where items are spaced
3. Date range to the present
4. Biographical dates

To produce the subheadings and layout as sandboxed here. Rationale: to aid reading navigation and break the guideline into more manageable segments when editing. Comments sought and welcomed. -- Ham105 (talk) 16:23, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

covering more than 25 style guidelines – No, that's a huge exaggeration. Maybe 10, depending how you count. But that's not the point. Good structure isn't arrived at by some formula, but by thinking about how to best help the reader understand each portion of the guideline.

• A real problem with level 5's, and a reason to avoid them, is that they're typographically indistinguishable from 4s. They're used in only one place on the page, where several large groups of related points absolutely have to be set off from one another and there's no other way to do it i.e. where Chronological items > Dates, months and years > Formats has subsections Consistency + Strong national ties to a topic + Retaining existing format.
• In the section under discussion, the existing indented bullet structure, and bolding, already draw the eye to each point in turn. The level 5's you propose mostly repeat what's said, in bold, in the bullet point immediately following.
• There's a progression of related formats which are meant to be read as a group. Breaking up into sub-sub-sub sections obscures that.
• "breaking the guideline into more manageable segments when editing" is absolutely of zero consequence. There are a very few of us scribblers editing, but an average of 1000 editors visiting daily for guidance. The best presentation is the only thing that matters.

EEng 05:24, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

I do not find the proposed version helpful. I prefer the current one. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:17, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

I concur entirely with EEng on this. Sectioning should be introduced when it works well, not just because it's possible to do it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:38, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

As a personal preferences, the new version is much easier for me to read and find a sub-section that is relevant to me. The current one is harder for me to read as it's just a giant bold wall-of-text. --Gonnym (talk) 23:01, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Date range character

The MoS says date ranges should use an unspaced ndash or a spaced mdash (bot of which I agree with). However, it doesn't say whether we should use the unicode character (as given in the helpful toolbox just below the edit summary), the html entity – or the template {{tlx{ndash}}. Or is there no preference? Should we retain the existing variation, similar to WP:RETAIN and WP:DATERET? I find the unicode character easy to enter using the toolbox or via copy and paste from nearby text. I also find the other 2 choices quite cluttered that makes editing harder to read. Thoughts? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stepho-wrs (talk • contribs)

Funny you should ask. EEng 01:22, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. Although I might have missed the train :(  Stepho  talk  02:45, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

The train seems to have stalled anyway. EEng 04:11, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

@Stepho-wrs: should use an unspaced ndash or a spaced mdash Where is this? Please link the actual section where this is stated. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:15, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Dates_and_numbers#Ranges, second and fourth bullet points.  Stepho  talk  10:46, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

Actually it's unspaced en dash or spaced en dash. Never em. EEng 11:40, 4 August 2018 (UTC)